Thursday, April 26, 2012

Why Dominic Grieve should resign (II)

In December last year I raised an Epetition calling
for the resignation of Dominic Grieve because he took it upon himself to
investigate the death of Dr David Kelly, the arms inspector who brought
attention to the 'dodgy dossier' which took us into an illegal war with Iraq.
There was never a proper inquest into Dr Kelly’s death. In fact Dominic Grieve,
at the behest of Michael Howard, had himself backed an inquest into Dr Kelly’s
death in 2010 providing sufficient evidence warranted such an inquest. But
instead he looked into the death himself and concluded that on the ‘evidence’
he had seen there was nothing which led him to believe anything but the Hutton
Inquiry’s conclusion that Dr Kelly took his own life.

To begin with the Hutton Inquiry, or any other
inquiry, has no legal authority to establish the death of any person dying from
unnatural causes. That is the role of a coroner. The Hutton Inquiry was further
hampered by the fact that witnesses were not sworn in, and were only marginally
cross-examined – if at all. Likewise the Attorney General’s legal background
relates to occupational and safety law, and in fact he is rather a career
politician than a lawyer. Coroners have profession-specific training and
qualifications which it is unlikely either Dominic Grieve or Lord Hutton
possess, leaving neither of them in a position to replace a coroner, but which
both of them appear to have done.

·Coroners have to be available 24
hours a day 365 days a year.

·Coroners need to have
medical-training and very often possess forensic knowledge.

·Coroners need to keep up to date with
changes in Coronial Law – a discipline on its own.

The Attorney General is advisor to the government and
the highest legal authority in England and Wales. The last three Attorney
Generals, Peter Goldsmith, Patricia Scotland and the current one, Dominic
Grieve, have each exceeded their authority. In an email to the Attorney
General’s office on 18 May 2011, Christopher Stephen Frost, a specialist in
diagnostic radiology, sought reassurance that due process would take place in
establishing an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly. As I've mentioned before, in his email he
pointed out that due process had not ensued with both Grieve’s predecessors,
“Lord Goldsmith over his twice changed Iraq War legal advice and Baroness
Scotland over the twice cancelled Serious Fraud Office investigation of British
Aerospace”.

On 19 December 2011 Justice Nicol attempted to bring
to an end any chance of an inquest into the death of Dr Kelly, which is
alarming since there never was a proper inquest. Instead the findings of the Hutton
Inquiry, which dealt with this unnatural event clumsily, was allowed to stand. To
add to the lack of justice from what was more correctly labelled “a whitewash”
Hutton prohibited papers and photographs related to Kelly’s death from public
scrutiny for 70 years, a decision subsequently upheld by Dominic Grieve, and
Justice Nicol. Some details of the police investigation and post mortem reports
have been released but the all-important photographs, which, in conjunction
with an inquest would help establish the truth, are still being withheld.

By not releasing photographs of Dr Kelly’s body and the
position where it lay does nothing to allay suspicions that the body was moved
at some time between being found and the arrival of the paramedics. There are
conflicting reports as to where the body lay when it was discovered and a short
time afterwards. Paramedics, David Bartlett and Vanessa Hunt, on their arrival
at the police-scene, applied electrodes to the body while the police took
photographs. The body at this time was lying flat on the ground far enough away
from the tree for a person to walk between the tree and body. The paramedics
pronounced Dr Kelly dead at 10.07 a.m. Earlier Ms Holmes and Paul Chapman, who
were searching the area found Dr Kelly slumped back against the tree, where the
police-dog-team also mentioned they had seen the body. These discrepancies were
ignored by the Hutton Inquiry. No coroner in the land would have ignored such a
conflict of evidence without cross-examining the witnesses.

A group of dedicated medical experts, who have long
questioned Hutton’s finding of suicide in Dr Kelly’s death continue to call for an inquest. Their latest request, made a few days ago, raises the issue about
the moving of the body. A proper inquest, when it is granted, will almost
certainly establish that the body was moved. Who moved it? When? Why? Those are
likely to be the more important additional questions.